Karlijn A.C. Meeks, Ph.D.

Karlijn A.C. Meeks is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. She also serves as a Special Volunteer at the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health (CRGGH). She earned a Bachelor of Science (2010) and Master of Science (2012) in Nutrition & Health from Wageningen University and a Ph.D. in Public Health Epidemiology (2017) from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Meeks completed post-doctoral training in public health epidemiology at the University of Amsterdam (2017 - 2018) and specialized in genetic epidemiology through postdoctoral work at the CRGGH (2018 - 2024). She has also held Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar positions at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (2017) and Stanford University (2023).

Dr. Meeks’ research interests include the epidemiology and genetic epidemiology of cardiometabolic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and dyslipidemia, in diverse populations. She uses innovative study designs to gain insight into the causes of these diseases in underrepresented populations, in particular African-ancestry populations. These innovative designs include comparing an African migrant group living in different countries to assess the role of national context as well as comparing African migrants with non-migrants still living in Africa to assess the role of migration. Her research uses classical epidemiologic as well as genome-wide association, epigenome-wide association, and Mendelian randomization approaches to add to the slowly growing literature on the prevalence, determinants, and underlying biology of cardiometabolic diseases in Africans. Dr. Meeks is a recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) with which she studies the interrelationships between lifestyle factors, cytokines, genetic variants, and epigenetic biomarkers in type 2 diabetes among African-ancestry populations.